The majority of principals are satisfied with the corps members working in their schools. In the 2017 RAND study, 86 percent of principals strongly agreed (37 percent), moderately agreed (28 percent) or somewhat agreed (21 percent) with the statement, “I am satisfied with the corps members in my school.”

Of the principals who felt satisfied: 89 percent agree that corps members contribute to a positive, collaborative professional culture; 90 percent reported corps members build strong relationships within their school community; and 81 percent indicated that their corps members demonstrate leadership.

Of the survey respondents, 82 percent would hire a corps member in the future, while 88 percent responded that they would recommend hiring corps members to other principals.

For the past two decades, we have commissioned the biennial National Principal Survey (NPS), an independent, external survey of our partner principals to evaluate the performance of corps members in their schools. RAND Education, a division of the RAND Corporation, administered the most recent survey in 2017.

Similar to previous years, the 2017 iteration investigated principal satisfaction with corps members, satisfaction with the support provided by TFA, likelihood of hiring corps members again, and satisfaction with alumni teachers (on a narrower set of questions).

The 2017 main report and research brief can be found on RAND’s website. Findings from this research are limited to those principals who completed the survey. This means that the reported results do not necessarily encompass the opinions of all principals who had TFA corps members working in their school at the time of the survey.